Threshold winnower
A threshold winnower is an exotic weapon used in the heptarchate and hexarchate. Threshold winnowers appear in Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem. Description Threshold winnowers resembled kinetic sculptures of wires, wheels, and shafts. The first winnowers had no shelter zones for operators; modern winnowers indicate a shelter zone with a faint glow when active.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 They can also be operated uncrewed.Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6 Either way, their operation is notoriously finicky.Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6 When active, winnowers release a vast spindle of wind and produce sounds variously described as "like a furnace exploding, like wineglasses singing shattered, like bells slamming from side to side."Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 Every door and opening affected by a winnower exhales corpselight, a deadly radiation, including the eyes of its victims.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1, 3 RemovingNinefox Gambit, Chapter 15 or covering affected eyes does not change the result. Other effects may include bleeding from every pore in the bodyNinefox Gambit, Chapter 12 and more eyes, each looking at the active winnower, boiling out of toothed, snapping gashes which form in victims' skin. Those affected die in agony, mutated, exsanguinated, or baked to death.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 One known survivor's damaged eye was observed to shine with ghostlight.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1 Though they do not damage nonliving objects,Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6 most winnower variants kill living beings indiscriminately. There have been attempts to get them to target heretics selectively.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 History Threshold winnowers are considered a weapon of last resort due to the extent of their horrific effects.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1 Kel Command used them sparingly, even centuries after their development.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 The first threshold winnowers were activated by General Shuos Jedao at Hellspin Fortress, destroying heretics and Jedao's Kel troops indiscriminately, with a survival rate of hundreds out of over a million dead.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3 Jedao's use of threshold winnowers for this notorious massacre tainted their historical image so profoundly that they are still associated with Hellspin's slaughter and treachery hundreds of years later. An instructor of Kel Cheris at Kel Academy had once witnessed a threshold winnower in use, and described it to her class. Ghostlight glimmered from the instructor's left eye, which had been damaged in the attack.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1 During the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles, Captain-magistrate Rahal Gara brought Brevet General Kel Cheris a proposal for getting threshold winnowers to work under the Fortress's heretical calendar, potentially targeting heretics only. Despite reservations, Cheris allowed the possibility to be investigated.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 The threshold winnowers were later used. Ninefox Gambit, ChapterRaven Stratagem, Chapter During the Swanknot swarm's first engagement with the Hafn invasion swarm, all twelve of the swarm's threshold winnowers were launched uncrewed into dispersed orbits around the Fortress of Spinshot Coins. They were not activated, but the Hafn recognized them and fled.Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6 Trivia * In the acknowledgments for Revenant Gun, the author thanks Peter Berman for helping with the mathematics of threshold winnowers.Revenant Gun: Acknowledgments References Category:Weapons Category:Hexarchate Category:Heptarchate Category:Stubs